On Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 2:54 PM, Guy Harris <guy at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> On Oct 27, 2015, at 8:19 AM, Bradley White <bww at acm.org> wrote:
> > On Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 7:40 AM, Guy Harris <guy at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> >> On Oct 26, 2015, at 2:50 PM, Bradley White <bww at acm.org> wrote:
> >>> On Sun, Oct 25, 2015 at 2:30 PM, Guy Harris <guy at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> >>>> Is this just something to let people know whether they have an
> up-to-date version of the tzdb files or not?
> >>>
> >>> Yes, although I think of it simply as let people know what version of
> a tzdb file they have. (Whether that is the latest version is a separate
> question.)
> >>
> >> Which version they have, or which version of the IANA tzdb the version
> they have is based on? :-)
> >
> > The version of the data file that was passed to zic to produce the
> zoneinfo file in question.
>> "The version of the data file that was passed to zic to produce the
> zoneinfo file in question" presumably means, here, "The version string,
> which was passed as one of the arguments to zic", as the text files don't
> themselves include version numbers.
>
They don't explicitly at the moment, no. (They used to have RCS Ids.)
> > (If someone downstream wants to modify data files and recompile them,
> then sub-versioning is up to them.)
>> And they can pass any version string they choose.
>
Yes. Presumably it would be something useful.
> >>> Then you could tell, for example, where /etc/localtime came from.
> >>
> >> Well, on my system, it came from a symlink() call:
> >>
> >> $ ls -l /etc/localtime
> >> lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 39 Oct 10 21:20 /etc/localtime ->
> /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles
> >
> > And on others it is a copy. It seems preferable to have the data be
> self identifying rather than assuming anything about symlinks.
>> Presumably, then, by "where /etc/localtime came from" you meant "the tzdb
> name for the default time zone".
Yes. And the version.
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